1. Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel.

2. Their ranks are breaking like thin clouds before a Biscay gale. 3. How often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings!

4. His words were shed softer than leaves from the pine, and they fell on Sir Launfal, as snows on the brine.

5. The Kingdom of God is like a grain of mustard seed, is like leaven hid in three measures of meal.

6. A wordy writer commands his language as a rider governs the horse that is running away with him.

7. The blood dropped out of her cheeks, as the mercury drops

from a broken barometer tube.

8. The little bird sits at his door in the sun, atilt like a blossom among the leaves.

9. With wings folded, I rest on mine airy nest, as still as a brooding dove.

10. Their lives glide on like rivers that water the woodland. II. Cowards whose hearts are all as false as stairs of sand, with livers white as milk.

12. Poets commonly have no larger stock of tunes than a hand organ has.

13. It [mercy] droppeth as the gentle rain from Heaven upon the place beneath.

14. She sat like Patience on a monument, smiling at grief.

15. She let concealment, like a worm in the bud, feed on her damask cheek.

16. A fatal habit settles upon one like a vampire, and sucks his blood.

17. Over thy wounds now do I prophesy, which, like dumb mouths, do ope their ruby lips.

18. The vulgar intellectual palate thinks nothing good that does not go off with a pop like a champagne cork.

19. She saw my statue, which, like a fountain with a hundred spouts, did run pure blood.

20. As fire drives out fire so pity, pity.

Direction.

here begun :

Find apt resemblances, and complete the comparisons

II. Little

I. The vessel swept toward the reef-2. Darkness falls from the wing of night-3. She melted from her seat-4. It was besmeared as black -5. The Old Guard rushed upon the broken squares of the English-6. A thought sometimes hits one-7. He is as deaf-8. He was as blind 9. He is more puzzled - 10. The telegraph stretches its ugly length across the continent troops of sparks, scattering as in fear, thread the tangled darks of the chimney 12. Locomotives with their trains fly to and fro over the continent - 13. Webster's thoughts stand out as plainly to the sight-14. In "Sartor Resartus" and in much of modern literature, pantheism gleams and glitters — 15. As we grow old we should grow sweet and mellow

Direction.

Supply the words like, as, just as, or so, and convert each pair of sentences numbered below, into a single sentence:

1. Odious habits fasten only on natures that are already enfeebled. Mosses and fungi gather on sickly trees, not on thriving ones.

2. One may speak and write in a style too terse and condensed. Hay and straw must be given to horses in order to distend the stomach.

3. Specific words are more effective than general terms. The edge of a sword cuts deeper than the back of it.

4. Till men are accustomed to freedom, they do not know how to use it. In climates where wine is a rarity intemperance abounds.

5. Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow. The tortoise reached the goal before the hare.

6. When the presumption is on your side, you should not neglect the advantage. A body of troops able to defend a fortress, when inside of it, may be beaten if they sally forth, and fight in the open field.

7. Gentle means sometimes accomplish what harsh measures cannot. The sun made the traveller take off his coat when the wind failed to do it.

8. To adduce more than is needed to prove your conclusion is suicidal. If one strikes a wedge too violently, the elasticity of the wood throws it out.

LESSON 45.

THE COMPARISON.

Direction. Bring into the class twenty-five rare comparisons, twenty of which were found in your reading, and five are your own. Let some be like those last given in the Lesson above.

LESSON 46.

THE METAPHOR.

In the comparison, the relation of likeness between things is, as you have seen, pointed out or asserted. But this relation may be assumed. It being taken for granted that the reader or hearer sees the point of resemblance, the words like, as, just as, and so may be omitted, and the word or words that denote one of the things may be brought over and applied to the other.

This assumption of likeness may be of different degrees. We may, for example, say, The stars are night's candles; or, presuming on the reader's or hearer's fuller knowledge of the likeness between the things, candles and stars, we may substitute the name of one for that of the other, and, without using stars at all, say, Night's candles are burned out, meaning, of course, that the stars have vanished in the dawn.

A metaphor is a figure of speech in which, assuming the likeness between two things, we apply to one of them the term that denotes the other. This figure is encountered everywhere in speech-in almost every sentence. Often

too there are words whose metaphorical significance has so faded out of them that we fail to detect it.

Richter has

called language "a dictionary of faded metaphors."

The rhetorical value of the metaphor is the same as that of the comparison, or simile. But the metaphor, briefer than the comparison, leaving more to the reader or hearer to detect and stimulating him to the detection, is a stronger figure. Often it has more beauty. Metaphors may be

changed into comparisons.

Direction. — Point out the metaphors in these sentences, substitute plain language for some of them, and note the loss of vividness and beauty:

1. The soul of Jonathan was knit to that of David.

2. Sir James Mackintosh's mind was a vast magazine of knowledge.

3. Charles I. stopped and turned back the tide of loyal feeling. 4. The robin knows when your grapes have cooked long enough in the sun.

5. Stop my house's ears.

6. The valiant taste of death but once.

7. While trying to prop the fortunes of another, Bacon was in

danger of shaking his own.

8. He baits his hook for subscribers.

9. His strong mind reeled under the blow.

10. Keep you in the rear of your affection, out of the shot and danger of desire.

II. The compressed passions of a century exploded in the French Revolution.

12. Antony is but a limb of Cæsar.

13. This rudeness is a sauce to his good wit.

14. Dwell I but in the suburbs of your good pleasure?

15. He can scarcely keep the wolf from his door.

16. It was written at a white heat.

17. Lord Burleigh was a willow and not an oak.

18. Strike while the iron is hot.

19. Ought has deserted the service of the verb owe.

20. Fox winnowed and sifted his phraseology.

21. The fame of the elder Pitt has been overshadowed by that of the son.

22. If, gangrened by state jealousy, I get up here to abate the tithe of a hair from his just fame, may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.

23. Inflections are words that have lost their specific gravity.

24. Murray's eloquence never blazed into sudden flashes, but its clear, placid, and mellow splendor was never overclouded.

25. We are to judge of a word by reference to its yoke-fellows in the sentence.

Direction. - Recast these sentences, using at least a single metaphor in each —

Direction. Bring into the class all the metaphors you have time to collect.